New social network is built on videos

How do you get to know someone? Sharing messages and photos are fine, but it’s hard to beat the impact of video.

Video delivers a person’s image along with their voice, facial expressions and movements. It’s the best medium we have until holograms arrive.

And video is the foundation of Kazzanova, a social discovery network where members introduce themselves by posting a 60-second video with their profile.

Members can view the most popular videos and search the collection to find other members with shared interests. The can build a circle of friends and exchange private messages with other users.

A member’s profile includes their score, which is based on their level of participation in the network and responses from other members. Your score increases when you post, share and invite others to join and when others give your content a “WOW.”

Kazzanova is a available as a free download for iPhones in the iTunes App Store and for Androids in the Google Play Store.

By: Ric Manning On 2/23/2017

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Tools give mobile apps a workout

Every digital developer knows a story like the one I read in a business magazine. It was about a company that made a pitch to the investors on the TV show Shark Tank.

After the show aired, the company’s website got so many hits that its server crashed, costing the company millions in lost sales.

Experitest is a service that helps companies prepare for a guard against  disasters like that. It provides quality assurance tools for mobile app developers including manual testing, performance testing, load testing and monitoring for mobile applications.

The Experitest toolkit includes cloud-based mobile app testing tools that can be based online or on site. Other tools test mobile app functionality and performance. They include test scripting and results reporting with screen shots and videos.

The tools are available for all mobile operating systems, including iOS, Android, Windows Phone and Blackberry and they integrate with all Application Lifecycle Management environments.

For more details, visit the Experitest website.

By: Ric Manning On 2/23/2017

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UK service puts content on top blogs

There are more than 150 million blogs in the world, way more than any any business hoping to see its product mentioned online could possibly reach. Nor should it want to.

Savvy marketers would tell them that only blogs worth reaching are those with a shared topic interest and a high visibility ranking. And those are the blogs that iNet Ventures says it can target.

The UK-based digital marketing service specialized in influencer marketing. In other words, it helps businesses get their stories told on blogs that have the power to influence prospective clients and buyers.

The company says it targets blogs in the client’s niche area and uses “an organic approach which avoids unnatural SEO practices.” It gets links placed on blogs that, like this one, have a domain authority rating of 20 or higher.

Prices for one link placement start at £35. For more information and to see the full range of services, visit the iNet Ventures website.

By: Ric Manning On 2/14/2017

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Malwarebytes suite fights computer invaders

A few years ago, a friend asked me to find out why her computer was acting oddly and functioning slowly. It turned out that her PC was infected with malware and adware and the only solution was to have her hard drive wiped and restored, a job that cost her almost $300.

A cyber security collection of protection programs developed by  Malwarebytes is one of the leading programs that can protect a personal computer against those types of expensive invasions and infections.  

Malwarebytes anti malware shields desktop and laptop computers - running either Windows or Apple’s Mac operating system - as well as mobile devices against a variety of dangerous malware threats.

The package offers multiple modes of scanning, including a custom function that lets users designate how and how often their computer is inspected. Real Time protection is available as a premium feature for users who want constant protection against spyware, adware, malware and other threats.

A free trail version of Malwarebytes is available to download for PC or Mac at the Anti Malware Suite website.

By: Ric Manning On 2/13/2017

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Encore headphones are priced for groups

I’m no fan of earbuds. I’ve tried at least a dozen different ones and none of them ever felt comfortable in my ears. Give me real headphones any time.

That’s why I was happy to find the special deal at Encore Data Products where they’re selling stereo headphones for $2.99.

At that price I could afford to buy several pair to stash in my nightstand, car, travel bag and any other spot where they could be handy to have.

Encore says these phones have a four-foot cable with volume control with leatherette earpads and a volume control wheel built into the cable.

The ENC-CCV model headphones would be a good fit for schools, libraries, training centers and similar situations where multiple headphones are needed. The earpads can be wiped clean after each use.

The headphones come in bags that could be labelled and assigned to individual students.

You can get more details on the ENC-CCV headphones or get a quote on volume purchase at the Encore Data Products website. The company is also @EncoreDataProd on Twitter. 

By: Ric Manning On 2/13/2017

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Tank Spotter app targets the propane industry

Gizmo Editor Review

You don’t have to know anything about the propane industry to recognize that Tank Spotter could be an incredibly useful app for anyone in that line of business. It can help a sales staff find and manage new customers and help installation techs meet the stringent government safety requirements.

The app was developed by Bill Stomp, a war veteran who said he drew on his experience in military intelligence.

“The idea for this app comes from that world,” Stomp told me. “We would gather intel from our field guys - marines, seals, airplanes, satellites, etc. - and then ‘spot’ the enemy. In the fuel delivery industry we have field guys called drivers, techs, managers and sales people. They can ‘spot’ sales leads such as a competitor's fuel tanks with the app."

Tank Spotter’s home page presents a series of options for dealing with a company’s existing accounts and with potential new clients.

Let’s say an employee or manager is driving around their home area and they see a property with one or more propane tanks. Is it one of theirs? Does it belong to a competitor? Maybe it’s an opportunity to make a new sale.

To "spot" the tank, they open their mobile phone or tablet and click to the Tank Finder page. This page is the heart of the app. It lists the actions you can take when you have eyes on a tank. Users can log it as a sales lead, a safety or maintenance issue, or record it as one of your tanks and update the details associated with that installation.

Options let users note the type of tank, its address and description, the name of the business and the company’s contact person. A single button lets them use GPS technology to record and map the tank’s location. They can also capture a photo or record a short video.

A delivery driver or maintenance tech can use similar features for logging safety issue or a maintenance issues. The data is either sent immediately to the company’s central database or stored until the phone is within cell phone range, a useful feature in remote areas where many propane customers are located.

A section called View Tanks Spotted presents a map showing all the collected tanks, with color-coded pins to match the different types of reports. A competitor's tank get one color, other colors are assigned to safety issues or sales prospects. The map can help the company plan and schedule sales calls or safety inspections to focus on a specific area.

Another useful feature is the Tank Docs section that lets users create digital versions of the various forms that a propane dealer has to fill out, file and store. An Estimator section includes tools for estimating pricing for a new account or create an invoice for a new or existing client. Users can also record meter readings leak checks and safety inspections.

Tank Spotter is a well-designed app that anyone with basic data-entry skills will be comfortable using. And, it’s an excellent example of how mobile technology can be put to work helping even the smallest business.

Tank Spotter is available to download in the Google Play Store. For a closer look at how the app works, visit the Tank Spotter website and watch my video review below.

By: Ric Manning On 2/12/2017

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Service provides temporary email addresses

It’s not uncommon for a digital service to demand your email address before it grants you access to a website, a game, a document or a social media platform.

That’s because for marketers, your email address is gold. Once you express interest in their product and hand over your contact address, they can slam your inbox with offers, coupons and assorted dreck.

This is the sort of situation when you might wish you had a disposable email address. That’s exactly whet a service called Temp Mail Address provides.

The site generates a random name under it’s domain and gives you a temporary mailbox. The name and the mailbox live for only one hour, long enough for you to get and deal with confirmation messages or other communication. It's kind of like SnapChat for email addresses.

The service is free and the operators don’t ask for your real address or any other personal information in order to use it. For more details, click the About box on the Temp Mail Address website.

By: Ric Manning On 2/10/2017

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Gear Heads explore Virtual Reality

Like any emerging technology, the world of Virtual Reality can be confusing. Headsets can vary from one mobile phone brand to another. And where can you go to learn about the best new VR games?

The gear heads at Gear Heads VR hope to fill that gap. They’ve created a website that posts reviews and profiles of VR gear and software.

The site lists four different headsets as the best of the year (so far). Each listing is accompanied by ratings on the product’s design, quality and price along with a link to buy the headset.

Visitors will also find a review of the Oculus Rift. Here’s a snippet:

This headset offers a lot in regards to comfort and immersion experience, but the best games have yet to be made. 

The game list includes reviews ARK Park, Robo Recall, Fallout 4 and Star Trek: Bridge Crew, among others.

For a deeper dive into Virtual Reality equipment and content, check out the Gear Heads VR website.

By: Ric Manning On 2/09/2017

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This service lets you buy Instagram followers

When I see a popular Instagram account, I usually assume that the owner has a long list of friends and associates. But that’s not always the case.

Services like iSocialmike sells packages of Instagram followers in sets ranging from 1,000 to 50,000 followers.

Details posted on the service’s website say it’s not unusual for people to buy Instagram followers. Here’s how they put it:

“There are hundreds and thousands of online businesses who use this type of strategy to better promote their products and/or services and they benefit from it greatly.”

The people behind iSocialmike don’t explain how they are able to deliver such large numbers of Instagram followers, but they do insist that they use “manual and natural ways to deliver followers and likes. No bots are involved in our services.”

To read their full story, visit the iSocialmike website.

Of course iSocialmike isn't the only service that helps Instagram users quickly grow their followers. I found a post on a blog called Income Artist that profiles four of the major services that use bots to collect generate Instagram like and follows.  The profiles include Instato, InstaQ, FollowingLike and Follow Adder.

By: Ric Manning On 2/07/2017

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Grasp builds Twitter accounts with bots

Unless your name is Trump or Kardashian, you will likely find it difficult to build a Twitter following that goes much past triple digits.

You can follow other Twitter users who share your interest, but there’s no guarantee they will follow you back. And, if you follow too many people, your ratio gets out of scale and Twitter will put you in time out.

And don’t even think about buying blocks of followers. That’s a waste of money.

But the coders at Grasp Mobile Development may have come up with a reasonable and affordable way to gather followers without courting trouble. Grasp uses scripts and bots to follow Twitter users who both share your interests and have a higher probability of following you back.

Their bot goes into action several times a day, but so often that they run afoul of Twitter’s API limitations. Working with a set of keywords that clients specify, the bot finds and follows like-minded accounts.

The system can also unfollow dormant accounts, block spammy followers and perform favorite and retweeting of posts that you would likely endorse on your own. The bot is also programmed to steer clear of accounts that deal in porn, drugs or other shady topics.

To get more details or to contact the bot-builders, visit the Grasp Mobile Development website and @GraspMobile on Twitter.

By: Ric Manning On 2/06/2017

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Your photos will be happier in the cloud

I recently bumped into one of my daughter’s friends from their high school years and I wanted to show her some old snapshots from the 1990s that I had scanned. At first I was disappointed, thinking I hadn’t put copies of the photos on my phone. Then I remembered that all of my digital photos were stored online where they could be viewed with a app.

There are several cloud-based services that will store digital photos and videos for free or for a few dollars a month. I use the two biggest services, Apple Photos and Google Photos. There are some subtle differences between the two services, but both are free and both do two things that are especially important: they keep your precious images safe from disasters like fire, theft or a hard drive crash, and they make it easy to view your photos any time and anywhere, whether you’re using a mobile phone, a tablet or computer.

If you use an iPhone, iPad or a Macintosh computer, Apple Photos is the logical choice. The program is included with the operating system for each of those platforms. Google Photos is likewise built into Android mobile phones and tablets.

The Google Photos app is available for free in Apple’s iTunes App Store for Apple mobile devices, but there is no Apple Photos app for Android devices. Mac and Windows computer users can log into either photo service using a web browser.

Both services get you started for free. Google Photos will back up an unlimited number of average-sized photos and videos like the ones shot with your mobile device. The maximum size is 16 megapixels for still images and 1080p resolution for videos. If you want to store higher resolution images, you can choose to use Google Drive where the first 15 gigabytes are free and 50GB costs $.99 a month.

The deal is similar at Apple if you want to use the iCloud Photo Library for offline storage. The first 15GB block on iCloud is free and, like Google, a 50GB warehouse costs $.99 a month. How much storage is that in the real world? I used iCloud to store about 22,000 files, mostly still images but also a few videos. That put me just over 50GB, so I jumped up to 200GB for $2.99 a month.

Once your account is set up, you can point the service to your photo libraries and it will automatically scoop up every photo or video it finds, a process that could take a day or more, depending on how many files you have. If you want to be selective, you can log in from the web to drag and drop.

Apple and Google both let you do some basic editing from any device. You can rotate, crop and lighten a photo from either platform while Apple includes a few additional options such as filters and redeye removal.

Both Apple and Google will display photos grouped by date, but you might want to organize them further by sorting them into topics such as people, places or events. Those collections are called albums and they can be shared, another great reason to put photos online. When you create an album, you can designate who else can access it. With a shared album, invited friends or family members can add photos and post comments for the whole group to see.

While there aren’t many differences between the two services, each has a few special tricks. Apple Photos makes it easy for users to create projects such as photo books, calendars, cards and slideshows. And they can order prints with just a couple of clicks.

Google excels in making quick animations and collages. If you’re not sure how to do it, Google will jump in without you. Every few days, I get a message from Google telling me it has taken a group photos that seem to be related and mashed them into a short animation. That’s my idea of a smart computer program - one that does my work for me.

By: Ric Manning On 2/05/2017

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Bubble shooter game rescues kittens

How do you rescue cute kittens from the clutches of an evil monster? Fire up your bubble shooter and start taking aim.

That’s the premise behind Puzzle Bubble Shooter Classic, a new arrival in the popular genre of mobile bubble shooters.

The Android game offers more than 300 different levels in four play modes.

Players pop colored bubbles by dragging or tapping their bubble blaster and aiming at descending rows of colored bubbles. When you have a bubble in your sights, release your finger to fire the shooter.

Match three balls or more of the same color to score. Combos and boosters that include a rainbow, fire, lava and a friendly provide super aiming to help conquer each challenge.

Puzzle Bubble Shooter Classic is free to download in the Google Play Store and can be played offline without an Internet connection. The game include some optional in-game items to purchase.

For a closer look, check out the video below. You can also follow Viet Game Studio @nghichthienta on Twitter.

By: Ric Manning On 2/05/2017

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Website focuses on projection gaming gear

When my brother-in-law was scouting his basement to build his man cave, he showed me the large open white wall where he planned to hang a new flat-screen television.

“Don’t buy a TV,” I told him. “This is a great spot for a video projector.” For less money than what he planned to spend on a TV, a projector would give him a much larger image with the same level of high-resolution detail.

Plus, you get a killer killer gaming system.

Gaming with a projection video rig is the bread and butter of a website called, appropriately enough, Project Your Gaming. The site is currently featuring the Optoma GT1080, one of the best and, with a price tag of $674, among the most affordable projectors on the market.

The GT1080 has native resolution of 1920×1080 pixels (1080p), a bright 2,800-lumen output, and a contrast ration rated at up to 25,000:1.

Another impressive features is its short throw lens, which can provide a large projected image at a close distance, making it a good choice for both gaming and home theater use, especially in a low-ceiling room like my relative’s basement.

To get a closer look at the Optoma GT1080 in action, watch the video below and check out the review of the GT1080 at the Project Your Gaming website.

By: Ric Manning On 2/05/2017

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Vibbi says it can deliver Instagram followers

Scientists and philosophers like to tease their students by posing this question:

If a tree falls in a forest and no one is around to hear it, does it make a sound?

Here’s my version, tailored for the modern world of social media:

If you post a photo on Instagram and no one sees it, does the photo really exist?

The whole idea of starting images on the popular photo sharing platform is to get the image - and its creator - in front of other people.

Sharing on Instagram requires followers and, unless you’re a pop star or in the Kardashian clan, your follower count is likely under four digits.

Vibbi is a service that says it can fix that. Vibbi sells Instagram followers in packages that range from 100 followers for $2.97 to 10,000 followers for $69.99.

Vibbi’s website says its team of  “marketing specialists, top executives, and supply chain managers” can grow a client’s follower list without risking penalties imposed by Instagram. The service proclaims on its website that “at Vibbi, our process is 100% in line with Instagram's terms and conditions.”

For a closer look at what Vibbi offers, visit the Vibbi website.

By: Ric Manning On 2/01/2017

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